Brazil's Next Big Crisis Is Scaring Bankers and Wiping Out Jobs
- In Brazil's version of Detroit, unemployment is now soaring
- A steel worker finds himself deep in debt and out of work
Brazil’s Political Impact on Economy
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In the smog-filled, run-down industrial hubs that ring the southern end of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s next big crisis is taking root.
The labor market, long the country’s lone economic bright spot as growth stagnated, is suddenly deteriorating rapidly, driving unemployment all the way up to 7.6 percent from a record-low 4.3 percent at the end of 2014. Nowhere are the layoffs that are fueling that surge more acute than here, in this gritty complex of steel, auto and auto-parts factories built decades ago by the likes of Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG. Sao Paulo is now losing about 20,000 jobs each and every month, the state’s industrial federation estimates.